Maryland Community Newspapers Online
A report to be released today calls for the state to raise its minimum wage to $7.15 immediately and to $8.15 in July 2009, when the next national increase takes effect.
That is just one way of "rewarding work" that is recommended by "The State of Working Maryland 2008" from the Progressive Maryland Education Fund and the nonpartisan Maryland Budget and Tax Policy Institute.
Other recommendations include expanding the living wage and prevailing wage requirements to cover more companies and contracts and to make it easier for public employees to unionize.
The report also makes recommendations for "patching the safety net" by closing loopholes that allow income tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest individuals, thereby increasing revenue to the state budget, by increasing unemployment insurance and by crafting a plan for universal health care.
Recommendations for "achieving and maintaining independence" call for improving and expanding "programs for affordable rental housing, child care, transportation and other barriers that prevent low-income adults from gaining and keeping jobs." The report also calls for expanding need-based financial aid for college, "especially for part-time, community college, and vocational students" and for restoring the Thornton school funding formula for k-12 education to better account for disparities between rich and poor jurisdictions.
The report also includes several attention grabbers:
ï The median wage in Maryland grew by 2.5 percent between 2006 and 2007. At $18.25, it is only 4.4 percent above the 1999 level, adjusted for inflation.
ï The preliminary unemployment rate for July 2008 of 4.4 percent is the highest since August 2004 after being at "historically low" levels in 2007.
ï 762,000 Marylanders — 14 percent of the population — lack health insurance, 251,000 fewer than in 2001. This year's Medicaid eligibility expansion to 31,000 Marylanders will "somewhat" mitigate the increase in the number of uninsured.
ï Mortgage foreclosures in the second quarter of 2008 were 130 percent above the same quarter in 2007.
ï Union membership as a percentage of workers continues a long-term decline.
ï Maryland has the highest median household income in the nation, at $68,080.
"The increase seems to have been driven mostly by income growth among affluent and upper-middle class Marylanders, not middle-class and blue-collar workers," the report says. The figure "masks great disparities among Maryland's localities," it says.
Two Maryland counties — Montgomery and Howard — are among the 10 wealthiest in the nation with populations of more than 250,000. But Baltimore city has the eighth lowest median income of any jurisdiction with more than 250,000 people.
